Hello everyone !

Last week a friend of mine wanted to try a game on Universal battle aswell as testing his new army (VC) for an upcoming tournament in late february. This was all good to me as I don't have much opportunities to play 2500 games (most are in fact practice for the inter region) and also because I struggle against vampire counts.

I play a typicall mash list (2 smiths, BsB Grungni, 2x10 shield quarrelers, 25 shieldbreads, 26 Hammerers with groth, 2OG, 2canon, a Grudge thrower and 2 gyros). Nasty indeed.

He had :
Blender lord on foot, all the toys, lvl 4 death (Purple sun, Spirit leach, Soul devourer and an other spell)
Newborn vampire on winged nightmare, Dark Majesty aura, ASF, 1+/4++, charmed shield (Bjuna's fate and Doom & Darkness)
Necro lord, lvl 4 of vampire with Arkham book (Nehekk, Van Hell, Infernal viguor and Resurrection)

3x30 zombies
30 ghouls
2 Giants bats
2x5 wolves
2 Spirit hosts
8 Crypt horrors
2 terrorgheists

Deployment

We played on an 2014 ETC map (the 4th).

He choosed side and took bottom. I choosed to hard castle in the top left, around the ruins. I had quarrelers - flaming OG in ruind - Longbeards - Hammerers - Organ gun - Quarrelers, and the rest of my warmachines + 1 gyro behind it. The other gyro was behind the impassible terrain on the right.

He deployed as follows, from left to right :
Crypt horrors (Flying Vampire behind them) - Bats & Spirit hosts, zombies behind them - Ghouls with blender - Wolves with zombies + Necrolord behind them - Zombie - Spirit hosts and wolves facing the impassible. One terror was hiding behind the central hill, the other one was in sight of one of my canon.

Pre-Game thoughs :

His list had all the things he needed : destructive characters, chaffs, lot of zombies and two big terrorgheists.
I setted up in my mind the targets by Priority, which was pretty easy and straight forward :
-Terrors and flying Vampire ; things I cannot decently hope to kill outside of shooting, as I expected him to be smart enough to not send them in the hammerers.
-Chaffs (Wolves, Bats, Spirit hosts), what can rapidly reach and kill/glue my warmachines is always high priority
-Crypt horrors, as any other monstruous unit.
Concerning magic, my first plan was to stop nehekk and van hell. I could allow the rest to go through in the first place (except purple sun of course). But if I have to give my shooting the most chances to succeed in order to win that game, and anything that nullifies or at least diminushes its effectiveness should be stopped.

I won first turn, and got a magnificent "2" on Ancestral Grudge. The dire wolves vanguarded, both 20" from the gyros.

Turn 1 :

The Snorrisson dwarves were calm and ready. They fought the undead filth enough time to know to what to do, even if the past encounters ended up badly for the lads. The dwarven line was in place and stood still, only the lone gyrocopter flew towards the dire wolves, eagger to burn them with his steam.

The artillery battery designated their targets, and soon a fiery canonball fused through the battlefield to impact one of the massive rotten dragon, killing it for good in one shot. Wanting their own piece of the glory cake, the Grudge Thrower crew aimed for the supposed position of the second Terrorgheist (following the description of his location given by the nearby Gyrocopter). A massive rock described a perfect arc in the sky and launched behind the far away hill, with the satisfaying sound of crushed bone and flesh. The second winged horror was down !
The dwarves hailed the mighty engineers for their work, and quickly focused on the next targets. The quarrelers, along with an organ gun sniped the central wolf pack, and the other one unleashed a volley of burning iron right into the crypt horros, taking three of them down.

On his stead, the vampire lord fulminated in rage. His favorite pets were brought down before they could play with the little and stubborn midgets. He ordonned his ost to march straight onto the ennemy line. He saw what the dwarves were capable off when it came down to shooting, and he wanted to close on them as fast as possible. The winds of magic blowed weakly, and his necromancer slave failed to raise any undead.

Turn 2 :

The whole undead army suddenly appeared on top of the hill. The engineer took a little time to look what was coming to them and quicly aimed their machines. In a thunderous storm of iron and smoke, the screaming ghosts, along with the giant Bats were brought to dust. Another crypt horror also was shot down by a successful canonball.
The meaning time, the dwarf line moved. The hammerers and quarrelers from the far side wheeled towards the undead army, in order to be able to participate to the fights when they would start. The lone gyrocopter killed two wolves, dropping his bomb over them. He kept chasing them for the major part of the battle.

The undead kept moving forward. The crypt horrors setted themselves up for a charge on the rank of crossbow wielder, and the rest of the walking deads formed an arc to overwhelm the dwarves with their numbers. The newborn vampire, smelling fresh blood, talloned his steed and flew above the dwarven line, helped in that task by some nasty magic from the necromancer lord. That's all what he could do, the dwarven magic defense still stopping him from healing the wounded horrors, or raising some more zombies.

Turn 3 :

The Threat of a mounted vampire behind their line alarmed the dwarf gunline, and they quickly aimed their machines on him. The gyrocopter that was in stand by flew over the blood sucker and dropped a bomb that wounded him once. Then, the mighty warmachines of the bearded engineers unload their fury on the same target. But when the dust settled, he was still standing, untouched. The crew of the canon drew their axes, and calmly prepared to fight.
The rest of the line setted up to recieve the incoming charges, the hammerers some foots in the back to came in after the longbeards would have absorbed the impact. Thorekk The denier, runesmith in charge of the dwarf army, left his bodyguards to stand up against the zombies on their left, and to allow the elite dwarves to break through the other unit and to reach the ghouls. He was confident that the rune he forged himself on the standard of his previous unit would make his will as strong as hardened steel.

In a horrifying scream, the undead army charged. The crypt horros impacted the quarrelers, and the zombies next to them got in the longbeards line. The ghouls, along with the undead general was too desorganised to successfully reach the dwarven shieldwall. Still enraged, the vampire ordered the rest of the zombies to march towards the hammerers, to block them from helping their friends. In combat, the stunties didn't move an inch back, loosing few of them and giving a taste of dwarven steel to the unliving abominations. The young vampire charged the nearby canon crew and empaled two dawis on his lance. The last beard alive stubbornly stood, refusing to abandon his beloved machine.

Turn 4 :

Intoning a death melopy, the dwarves charged. The hammerers bursted through the zombies in front of them, killing almost the whole unit. The dwarf general charged in the other pack of zombies. Seeing their leader facing an uncountable number of ennemies, the free quarrelers felt embolden and joined him into combat. On the other side, the gyrocopter charged the vampire to help the last crew member of the canon.
Behind them, the grudge thrower took advantage of its temporary islet of calm to throw another massive rock at the corpse eater, killing 12 ghouls right off the bat. In combat, the quarrelers lost half of their members to the monstruous horros and killed one in return, only to see it plus another one revive right after thanks to the necromancer's dark magic.
The gyrocopter survived the assault of the mounted vampire in the first place, but died a few moments later.

The vampire lord and his ghouls charged the hammerers and tried to summon a deadly purple vortex on the dwarf line, but he was stopped by one of the runesmith who used his spellbreaker trinket. Enraging to see all of his actions negated by the dwarf impenetrable line, he swinged his sword into the steel armor of the dwarven elite and killed 10 of them ! The Longbeards finally got rid of the zombies they were fighting, and reformed to help the hammerers. The dwarf general and his quarrelers stood their ground, killing some zombies but the flow of dead corpses seemed infinte, in fact they would fight them until the very end of this battle. The Crypt horror, revigored by the undead magic, finally ate the last quarrelers, and turned around to prepare a flank charge on the longbeards.

Turn 5 & 6:

The white beards ignored the crypt horrors and front charged the ghouls, but only reached them on the edge. The warmachines had no available targets to shoot at and proceeded to move around, spreading out. In combat, the newborn vampire finally killed the last canon member, and aimed at the longbeards flank. The hammerers were all killed by the vampire and the remaining ghouls, who were know only 5 (the necromancer lord was smashed earlier by the mighty hammers). The combat moved to the longbeards, who got charged by the horrors and the other vampire, but the old dwarves stood. Over the course of the battle, they managed to kill the flying blood sucker and the last horrors, and also all the remaining ghouls. In the very end, the vampire lord crumbled, unable to get through the dwarven shieldwall efficiently.

Dwarf Victory ! 18 - 2 😃

Post-Game thoughs :

Well, this game was pretty straight forward after my first two round of shooting, killing off :
-The two terrorgheists (rolled two 6s to multiwounds !) and 3 Crypt horrors turn 1
-All the vampire chaff and one more Horror turn two.
This incredible shooting onslaught pretty much won me the game, but even then an IF'd purple sun and stomping blenderlord could still roll over all my army (he did kill the whole hammerers almost by himself). I was lucky he couldn't really 6 dice it and I could use my two spellbreakers/eaters to stop him doing so. Also, I only let nehekk go through once, wich was a big success ! After that, I proceeded to make the fights on my flanks to last as long as possible (by charging the gyro on the newborn, or with my general to stop the zombies from gluing the hammerers. My two fighting units worked very well together, even tho I lost the whole hammerer unit !

Overall, I didn't feel this game was good enough to write a full battle repport about it, but my inner pride wanted to share my first win against the filthy undeads ! ^^

I hope you liked the clumsy writing style of it, I tried to make it somewhat untertaining 🙂